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Ron vs the Cover Monsters!

ADVENTURES WITH RON, Part IV

Ron and I had his four books ready to go, except for … everything.

A book isn’t just a manuscript. You need an ISBN registration, you need a cover, you need a back cover blurb and material, an author’s bio, an author’s photo, copyright information. We needed this stuff called Metadata – a long description, a short description, a one line description, something called BISAC, something else called SOE (search engine optimization).

Basically, after the big monolith of the manuscript itself, we also needed to build all the little tiny pieces of text that would go into the book and its online prooofiles.

Ron’s Toltec books were a trilogy, so we thought it would be a good idea to include adverts in each book of the trilogy for the other trilogy books. That turned into adverts for all of his books. And the idea of adverts suggested that we should include blurbs and art for the adverts. And the Adverts section needed to be slightly different for each of the four books. So a lot of work to keep track of.

If all this strikes you as bearing a passing resemblance to this thing called work? Yeah.

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Ron vs the Format Monster!

ADVENTURES WITH RON, Part III

Now, if you’ve been reading this series, we should be at the Happy Ending. My pal Ron has his rights back. His books are taken down from Amazon. He can do anything he wants with them. He’s no longer chained to an undead zombie publisher.

If you haven’t been reading this series… what’s wrong with you? Go back. Read the series. It’s got sex, adventure, naked women, shaved goats, literature, the Village People make a guest appearance, the cure for cancer, the secret to happiness. Go!

Now! Read! I’ll wait here!

Back? Yes, there was slight exaggeration. But what do I care, you read it.

So, I say “Ron, you’ve got your books back, what are you going to do with them?”

Now, he can take them to another publisher, that’s an option. Some small press publishers will take previously published books. A lot of them don’t. For a lot of publishers, it’s like a sandwich. When you’re publishing, you like to publish a fresh new sandwich. You don’t necessarily want to publish a sandwich that someone has had sex with before. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

But yes, finding another publisher. Definitely an option.

Or he can self publish. A lot of people are doing that these days. I’ve done it… a lot. I gave courses in it. I have a bunch of materials I can give him to get him going and make it easy for him.

He says to me, “I was hoping you would do it.”

Surprised, I quickly look around to see who he’s talking to, someone who apparently walked into the room when I wasn’t paying attention, and is gullible enough to do all sorts of work for free.

But it’s just the two of us.

I have a bad feeling.

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Ron vs Amazon!

ADVENTURES WITH RON, Part II

This is the second part of the Odyssey of R.J. Hore and his faithful monkey (yours truly) on his quest to regain his books from limbo, and wrest his rights  from the Zombie publisher.

In our first Installment, we discovered that eTreasures LLC, publisher of R.J. Hore’s Toltec Trilogy, Dawn, Noon and Khan, and publisher of his one off We’re Not in Kansas, had in fact gone Zombie!

It was dead, defunct, rolled up, no longer in business. But somehow, it was still selling his books on Amazon, just not giving him statements or royalties or anything.

Intolerable!

So, how to get his rights back? I’m a guy with certain skills for situations like this, I can make a human body disappear in thirty-eight minutes flat, family rates…

I mean, I have other skills, more appropriate skills.

The first thing you do in a situation like this is go to the contract.

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Ron vs the Zombie Publisher!

ADVENTURES WITH RON, Part One

So, I have this friend, Ron. R.J. Hore. He’s a nice guy, retired banker, genial fellow. I would see him at Collectables Conventions and Antique Fairs, Farmers Markets, Fleas. He’d always have a table selling his books, often sharing the table with another writer. He had a replica Saber Tooth Tiger skull at his table, that was cool.

Anyway, whenever I saw him, I’d buy one of his books. That’s a thing I do. I buy books by local writers. Small press, self published, whatever. I’m a writer, they’re writers. I want to support my brethren.

The bottom line, I got to know Ron.

Honestly, he’s a pretty good writer, and mostly, I admire his gumption. I don’t think I’ve got the fortitude to sit at tables at these little conventions, hawking my books, watching thousands of people walk by refusing to make eye contact. I’m not really a people person. But I like people who are.

He’s a small press guy, his books are mostly published by Champagne Book Group with editors and everything.

He met the Champagne people when they had a dealers table at a local convention called Keycon, showed them his stuff, and they liked it. The rest is history.

Anyway, one day we were talking, and he had a problem.

It seems that he had a second publisher, eTreasures. They’d published four books for him – We’re Not in Kansas, a stand alone, and a trilogy – Toltec Dawn, Toltec Khan and Toltec Noon.

But he’d lost touch with them. Not replying to correspondence, there were no royalties, no reports, nothing. He was feeling kind of abandoned.

I’m thinking ripped off.

But you know how it is, I have certain skills for solving certain kinds of problems, so I agreed to look into it.

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Frankenstein vs the Ape!

Hey, that’s me at the bottom!

Welcome to Wild Hunt Press’s Duel of the Monsters, Volume 2.  Chris Nigro, the publisher of Wild Hunt invited me to contribute.

The rules were:

  1. They had to be recognized monsters – Frankenstein’s, Vampires, Wendigo, Sea Serpents, Krakens, Sasquatch, Grizzly, Lizard men, known to folklore, movies, television etc.
  2. They had to fight!
  3. There had to be a definite Winner!

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The Grindhouse Madman

I grew up working at a Drive-In, B-Movies are in my blood, cyborgs, ninjas, Charles Bronson flicks, gritty Italian giallos about unstoppable yet sleazy tough guys, careening through life like human car crashes, goofy monsters and the inept heroes floundering after them. My brother was a huge fan of Mack Bolan books, I used to collect them for him. So with that grindhouse sensibility, how could I not love the crazed stylings of I.D. Russell.  I first ran across him running a table at a local comic convention, and I quickly became a fan of his altar ego, the demented, unstoppable cop, Frank, from River City, a human engine of destruction, whether he’s facing off against Robot Mounties, Japanese Ninjas, Colombian Drug Lords or the entre at a Red Lobster. Firmly tongue in cheek, his work is full of inspired, hyperviolent lunacy. So check him out, it’s worth it…

I have a compulsion.

I need to be doing something creative.

I’ve made two feature films and have a dozen scripts that I’d like to produce next. I’ve written over thirty novels and published seven. I’ve got lots more story ideas swirling around in my head or illegibly written in point form on scraps of paper all over the house. I run two youtube channels: one a sock puppet movie review parody show and the other an outlet for whatever random short film or goofy sketch idea that crosses my mind.

But I also actively train in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and previously studied Hapkido (where I received a black belt). I’ve dabbled in boxing, tae kwon do, yoga, karate, judo, and aikido. I’ve competed in tournaments, done demonstrations at schools and folklorama and while I’v3 engaged in some pretty intense sparring in class, I’ve never been in a fight. (I’d like to keep it that way.)

So I’m busy. Real busy. The thing is, I can’t sit back on my laurels, (not that I have many in any scheme of things.) There’s always another project to work on, another corner to turn, another thing to try.

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The New Doctor – How Very Peculiar

A few years ago, I did a novel length piece of work called The New Doctor.

Basically, what happened was back in 1991, there was a local actor named David Burton.  He was a semi-big deal in a small town, he had a radio show, a column, did theatre.  Anyway, he was trying to get the local dealership to give him a car, for promotional purpose.  To help persuade them, he embellished his resume a little bit. Doctor Who was off the air, he figured what harm was there in attaching his name to a defunct children’s show. So he claimed that he was going to be ‘The New Doctor Who.’  It looked good, and when it failed to materialize, he could just say the project fell through, as these things often did.

Unfortunately, Doctor Who was kind of a cult thing, with legions of crazed fans, so he got a lot more attention than he intended. So much so, that he had to make up a more detailed story. A mysterious company, a hush hush pilot project called ‘Monsters of Ness’; shooting at caves, in a small town, a warehouse; even a location shoot in Austria; a red phone booth instead of the blue Tardis; twin girls called Heart and Diamond as companions. None of it was ever verified, and people did try. Eventually, the whole thing faded away.

Okay, that’s the ‘true part’ of the story. The consensus is that it was all a hoax, and personally, I don’t fault Burton at all. He told an innocent little white lie to polish up his resume, and it kind of exploded on him. If anything, I’m sympathetic.

So, I got the idea, what if Burton’s story was true.

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Local Heroes: R. J. Hore

I first noticed Ron (R.J.) Hore at a small local comic convention held at the Lord Gort Hotel.  This wasn’t one of those conventions which goes on forever, with thousands of people, hundreds of dealers, galleries of artists and cosplayers and celebrity guests.  This was just one of those piddly comic conventions, where it’s nostly actually comics – local stores, local toys, collectors looking to thin out their collections.

There in the middle of it all was Ron, a friendly, grandfatherly man holding court, at a table with a crystal ball, a saber tooth tiger skull, and a load of books, the Mousetrap Chronicles as I recall.  A local writer. I chatted politely, bought a book, made him sign it and went along with my day.  Hey, local guy, trying to sell his book.  You want to support that.  If we don’t support our local writers, who will?

Damn though, if I didn’t run across Ron at craft shows, and at Keycon, and the big ComicCon, at gaming cons, anime cons, local shows.  If there was an event selling tables, and sci fi and fantasy had half a chance, there’d be Ron, charming and gentlemanly, taking his ease and selling his books.  And he always seemed to have a new book out.  Ron was practically a fixture at these cons and shows, a welcome presence.  I’ve pretty much got all his books by now, but he just keeps writing them.

Whether he sold one book or dozens, he’s always retained his sunny disposition.  He’s a man who enjoys every part of the craft of writing. “I’m retired, so I have to do something,” he told me once.  “I told my wife that writing is cheaper than golf.”

So here’s R.J. Hore, in his own words…

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